


Carry On

by Dredfulhapiness



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), Spider-Man - All Media Types, Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, I'm so sorry, Iron Dad, Iron Family, Supernatural AU - Freeform, if I didn't write this Robert Singer was going to come to my house and haunt me, iron family angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-21
Updated: 2019-08-21
Packaged: 2020-09-23 04:11:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20333851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dredfulhapiness/pseuds/Dredfulhapiness
Summary: He studied the brick home. It was a simple two-story home. Entirely modern. Even the roof looked new. But Harley was right-- it was a quiet street in suburbia, and the neighbors were already wary of the goings ons in this house. Standing outside would only bring attention to themselves, and with the sheer length of their combined criminal records… well, that was just asking for trouble.As they watched, the house stopped being still. The blinds parted in one of the windows. The front door opened."I think," Harley said, "That's our cue."Peter took a deep breath. "Let's do this."





	Carry On

"This is the dumbest shit we've ever done, you know that, right?" Harley slammed the car door hard enough that the vehicle shuddered. "Like. The dumbest."

"Yeah," Peter said. "I got that." He hiked his duffle bag up on his shoulder. They both stared at the house. It didn't look haunted. Then again, they never did. After all, how would you know about a haunting if there was no one around to report it, or get hurt, or die. It was the ghosts in the abandoned asylums that tended to mind their own business.

"We could call in backup," Harley suggested. "Call Tony."

"He's got enough on his mind right now," Peter said. By that he meant: Tony had been nearly out of the game for the past five years. Besides helping with the occasional ghoul, Tony had become something of a stay at home dad. The thought of Morgan made Peter’s lips twitch into a smile. 

"And us dying is gonna alleviate any of that?"

"Will you stop that? We're not gonna die."

Then again, the stories weren't very promising. For the past three years, no one who walked into this house ever made it out. Real estate agents, buyers, kids who tried to spend the night on a dare. Peter swallowed. They weren't going to die. Right?

"Look," Peter said, "We're gonna go in there, figure out what’s haunting the place, and take 'em out. We've done it a million times."

Even he wasn't feeling too positive about this one. They'd all taken a break from this after Morgan had been born. Since then, they'd handled a few smaller cases, helped Nebula out a few times, but this was their first big case since the pregnancy had been announced. It was more daunting than Peter had expected. They'd been doing this for most of their lives, but for the first time he was actually scared of not coming home.

_ Morgan's making you sentimental _ he could hear Rhodey in his ear. And maybe that was true. But that's why he was doing this: the less things there were that went bump in the night, the less chance she'd ever have to encounter one. She'd be joining the family business over the rest of their dead bodies.

Which wasn’t really out of the question, was it?

“We shouldn’t stay out here,” Harley said. “The neighbors are probably about to call the cops on us.”

“We’re prospective buyers,” Peter answered.

He studied the brick home. It was a simple two-story home. Entirely modern. Even the roof looked new. But Harley was right-- it was a quiet street in suburbia, and the neighbors were already wary of the goings ons in this house. Standing outside would only bring attention to themselves, and with the sheer length of their combined criminal records… well, that was just asking for trouble. 

As they watched, the house stopped being still. The blinds parted in one of the windows. The front door opened. 

"I think," Harley said, "That's our cue."

Peter took a deep breath. "Let's do this."

\--

There were no bodies anywhere.

They'd checked the downstairs. They'd checked the crawlspace and the attic. They'd checked all six of the rooms upstairs. There wasn't a sign of a struggle, let alone a sign of over seventy missing persons.

"People don't just go missing," Harley said again.

"Yeah dude, I know. Maybe something's eating them."

Harley scoffed, as if Peter had suggested something ridiculous. They'd been in the house for nearly an hour, and besides the blinds and the door, they hadn't found evidence of anything out of the ordinary. No cold spots, no EMF, no scent of sulfur. They were running out of options here.

"Or maybe," Harley supplied helpfully, "it's nothing."

Peter made a face. "People don't just go missing," he mocked.

"Maybe something's eating them," Harley said.

"I don't sound like that."

"Yeah you do."

"No, my voice isn't that high pitched it's more like..." He dropped his voice an octave, "maybe something's eating them."

"Now you're just compensating for how squeaky your voice is."

"My voice isn't squeaky!"

"Dude, I think you might still be going through puberty."

"I'm going to kill you and tell everyone that this monster ate you."

Down the hall, someone screamed. They looked at each other, surprised, then rushed out of the study they had crammed themselves in.

Peter scanned the hallway. All of the four other doors were closed. Harley started down the left side of the hall. Peter stayed to the right.

The bathroom was empty: all pristine porcelain and decorative soaps and the bathmat looked like it had just been washed and laid down for the first time. Before leaving, Peter ripped the towel rack out of the wall. It felt heavy. He hoped it was iron. As he stepped out of the room he slammed his head into the doorframe. It sent him reeling back into the sink with a few choice words. It hurt badly enough that, for a few moments, his vision went black, but then he blinked and he was fine. He cursed his terrible depth perception. 

The next room looked like a home office. A desk sat in the corner. The closet doors were wide open. Empty. Peter turned to call to Harley only to come face to face with a ghost. 

It was decayed, jaw open and wide, eyes hollow and sunken. Flesh hung from its neck. Its hair was thinning and revealed a dented scalp. The temperature around him dropped, and the hair on the back of Peter’s neck stood straight up. 

"Get out!" The ghost croaked. It reached forward. Peter pulled the towel rack up in an arc through its transparent body. It disappeared like dust, fading back into the shadows of the room.

Peter heaved a breath. His pulse sputtered.

"Pete?" His gaze shot to the doorway Harley's voice was coming from.

"Just a ghost. I'm fine." Peter slung the towel rod over his shoulder and poked his head into the room he'd heard Harley in.

The room was empty. There was a bed covered with stuffed animals, a few portraits of clowns on the walls. The window was open, just a crack, and a breeze swept through. There was no sign of Harley. 

"Harley?" he called, his face scrunched. There was nowhere else he could be. The door to the rooms Peter had searched were all wide open.

"Peter!" It was Harley's voice again, loud and urgent. It was coming from... the bathroom? Peter followed it, towel rod at the ready. 

"Harley, what the fuck. Where are you?" he asked, when he only came face to face with a rusty sink and corroded tiles. The towel hanging on the rack was molded. Peter blinked.

There was another scream. Peter didn't have time to unpack all that.

He followed the sound downstairs. Beneath him, the steps groaned.

"Harley?!"

A noise behind him. Peter whipped around and brought his weapon down on the figure behind him. Instead of racing through it, the weapon stuck in the ghost’s head. It’s mouth opened in a disgusting grin. It rushed at him, through him, and when Peter turned his head to follow it, it was gone. 

He pulled his machete out of the wall. It came out with an avalanche of drywall that left his pants grey. 

He did a double take, tested the weight of the weapon in his hand.

What was going on? 

Something thudded. It was coming from downstairs. This runaround was exhausting. 

It wasn’t until Peter was halfway down the staircase that he realized this wasn’t a three story house-- at least, it hadn’t been when they’d arrived. Now, he was staring at a foyer he didn’t recognize. 

He was starting to think he wasn’t dealing with just a ghost, but he wasn’t sure what it could be. 

Loki, maybe, but this case seemed too small for him, and it also seemed far too violent. It wasn’t unlike him to cause destruction for his own, self-serving purposes, but haunting a house…? It seemed unlikely. 

Then again, this wouldn’t be the first time he did something with the sole purpose of fucking with them.

Peter made his way through a living room, a kitchen, and a dining room, each in different states of disarray. The living room looked impeccable, but the kitchen was covered with bugs and rot. The dining room looked like a tornado had swept through. A large picture hung crooked on the wall. The glass was cracked and covered with dust, but the picture in the frame was still visible. 

Peter’s blood ran cold. He stared at the photo of Tony and Morgan. It was them leaning over a coloring book, a crayon in each of their hands. In the background Pepper was at the sink. She was laughing at something Rhodey had said just out of frame. 

This was from the other morning. 

Not a picture, a memory.

The broken plates on the ground were, unmistakably, the same kind they had at the lake house. The table was busted, but it was theirs. Dread was starting to rise in Peter’s chest. 

His suspicions of Loki seemed even less likely.

Behind him, something moved.

Peter whirled around. 

The ghost was staring at him from the doorway. 

“Who are you?” Peter asked. “What is this?” 

He hadn’t been expecting an answer and he didn’t get one. The ghost smiled again, and Peter could see maggots wriggling around where its tongue should be. Bile rose in Peter’s throat. The ghost raised its hand, crooked a finger, and disappeared down the hallway. 

“Oh, Jesus,” Peter muttered. Reluctantly, he followed it. He kept his machete up, ready. His uneasiness was starting to grow into fear. 

The hallway was longer than Peter remembered it being. The walls were lined with family portraits. Peter’s eyes settled on a picture of Tony asleep in a recliner. A book was open on his chest, someone had drawn a frowny-face on his cheek. Peter blinked. The picture was of Tony, burnt, leaning against rubble. He had a distant stare, and, somehow, Peter knew he was dead. 

Somewhere in the house, a door slammed shut. 

As they passed empty rooms, Peter could hear bits of conversations. They sounded familiar, but he couldn’t quite place them.

_ “Who taught you how to shoot that thing?” _

_ “You did, Mr. Stark.” _

_ “I did a shit job, then. Fix your stance.” _

He could have sworn he heard May’s voice, too, distant, like he was underwater.

_ “Peter honey, we have to leave  _ now.”

_ “Where’s Uncle Ben? We need to get him, too.” _

_ “I said we need to leave now!” _

“Where are you taking me?” Peter asked. The ghost didn’t speak. It raised a crooked finger and pointed at a door. Peter looked at it until the photograph behind it turned into one of May and Ben grinning.

He could feel that something was wrong-- off-- like when you dream you’re getting ready. That didn’t make him feel any better. In his line of work, there were a lot of reasons something could feel wrong.

Not many of them were good. 

He swallowed, and opened the door.

The sight nearly made him sick to his stomach. It was the missing people, all of them. They were lined up in chairs, their necks limp like ragdolls, their fingernails black. Seventy of them, crammed into a room the size of a classroom. There was no blood, only decay, and that almost made it worse.

Peter gagged. 

A hand landed on his shoulder. A knee-jerk reaction: he swung his machete before turning around.

Peter didn’t realize his mistake until it was too late. For a moment, Harley didn’t seem to, either. He only stared at Peter wide-eyed until his knees gave out and he scrambled at Peter’s shoulder for support. Peter dropped the weapon. 

“Shit,” Peter said, reaching out and grabbing his elbow to steady him. “Shit, I’m so sorry.” 

Harley’s free hand clutched at his stomach. Peter helped him down to the ground with trembling hands. He pulled his jacket off and pressed it to Harley’s stomach. Immediately the stain started to spread. Harley’s hand fell from Peter’s shoulder to the cement flooring. It was dusty, and cold, and the last place Peter would want to die.

“Hey, keep your eyes open. You’re fine.” His voice was shaking. “You’re fine. You’re fine.” All of the first aid he had learned had escaped him. His phone was somewhere upstairs, if we went up to go get it, Harley would surely die before he could make it back to him. 

_ If you ever make it back to him  _ a voice in the back of his head taunted.

When Harley stopped breathing it wasn’t like the movies: Harley didn’t have any dramatic last words, he just died and left the room quieter than it had been moments before. 

Peter’s breath was stuck in his throat. His face was turning red, his head was throbbing. He’d killed Harley. His chest felt tight, like someone was stepping on it. 

“Peter,” someone behind him said his name. 

When he turned there was no one but the corpses. His stomach churned. He felt hungover-- no, still drunk. Dizzy.

“Peter,” said the air. 

His jacket became cold and heavy with blood. He didn’t lift it from Harley’s abdomen. He could feel the tears. They were sharp and stinging on his cheeks. He could see his own breath in the air. 

“Pete, wake up.” 

One of the victims had a tattoo on her forearm. Peter looked at it with a blank expression. It was a bright blue handprint. 

Peter panted. It was getting hot in this room, but Harley was so cold. He tried to remember why the handprint looked so familiar. He tried to focus on the fact that he’d just killed Harley.

He’d just killed Harley. 

There were footsteps upstairs. They were right above him. Peter wasn’t sure he was breathing anymore. He looked down at Harley’s face. His eyes were wide open and he stared at the ceiling, at nothing. Peter couldn’t stop thinking about the handprint. 

“Peter,” the voice was more urgent now. It was also more coherent. 

The handprint. 

The calm rushed over him so suddenly that it nearly knocked him over. “This isn’t real,” he said out loud. Relief. When he exhaled, The bodies disappeared. The footsteps stopped. He could breathe again, actually breathe. The world around him fell away. 

His eyes shot open. 

Harley knelt in front of him, splattered with blood-- breathing. Okay. Peter gripped his wrist. 

His head still ached. 

“Hey,” Harley warned him. “Calm down, you’re okay.”

“Djinn,” Peter gasped. “It’s a Djinn.” 

Harley snorted, but he couldn’t hide the relief that plagued his face. “What do you think I was doing while you took a nap?” 

Peter closed his eyes. His hand was still firm around Harley’s wrist. It grounded him. He wasn’t alone. Harley was with him.

The knowledge that it had all been a dream only made him feel a little bit better. The knowledge that his insides had been close to being turned into jam made him feel about the same as he already did. 

“Why couldn’t it have been one of the nice ones?” He asked. He thought about the Djinns that made it feel like your wildest dreams are coming true as they feasted on your blood. At least when they forced you to slip off it was peaceful. 

Instead, he got one of the shitty ones that likes to turn your organs to mush.

Harley offered Peter a pity laugh. “How’s your head?” 

“Too hard to be damaged.” Peter’s lips didn’t twitch as he told the joke.

“That’s what I like to hear.” 

“How about you?” Peter still didn’t let go of Harley’s wrist. “You okay?” 

“I’m fine, Pete. Don’t worry about me.” It should have made Peter feel better. It didn’t.

\--

Trying to get Harley into the house without Morgan seeing him was like trying to make their way through a labyrinth. 

She’d been waiting for them to return, and after trying three different entrances they’d been forced to split up. 

“I’ll go in the back,” Peter said, handing his jacket off to Harley to cover up most of the mess, “You go in the front and head upstairs.” 

Peter thought about the blood all over the front of Harley’s shirt and his face. They hadn’t had any blood of lamb, so he’d been forced to take the Djinn out the messy way: bashing its brains in. It was dirty, and smelly, and Peter made him wipe his feet on the grass before getting into the car.

“You know what’s weird?” Harley said on the way home. “He kinda looked like Jake Gyllenhaal.”

“What?” Peter glanced over at the driver’s seat. 

“The Djinn. He looked a lot like Jake Gyllenhaal.” 

A black eye could be explained to a four year old: a blood splattered self could not. 

Morgan, however, was only momentarily distracted by Peter:

“What happened to your face?” She asked him, pointing at his swollen and blackened eye. He managed a crooked smile. 

“I got into a fight.” 

She regarded him for a moment. Then, “Did you win?” 

Peter scoffed, surprised. Happy choked on his coffee. 

“Yeah,” he said. “Of course I won.” 

“Where’s Harley?” 

“He’s taking a bath,” Peter said.

“He isn’t going to come say hi?”

“He will when he’s done. He’s really dirty.”

“Why?” She followed him into the kitchen.

“He fell in the mud.” Peter rummaged in the fridge.

“How?”

“He’s clumsy.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. He was born like that.” He took a bite of chicken leg and grabbed the container of watermelon. 

“Why?”

“Poor genetics. You want cake?” 

“I’ll wait for Harley to have some with me.”

“Ouch.” 

It seemed that Peter wasn’t the favorite today.

\--

"You're drinking late," Tony said. Peter looked up from where his hand was wrapped around the neck of the beer bottle. "Rough day?"

Peter cleared his throat. "Just thinking." Tony pulled the chair out across from him and sat down.

"I thought we agreed you wouldn't do that anymore?"

Peter didn't laugh or respond. His eye was throbbing. His rib felt like it was being stabbed. He wondered, not for the first time, how he put up with this? Tony was still watching him, and Peter knew he was supposed to answer.

"It's just..." He cleared his throat again. "I saw a lot of stuff today I'd rather not see again. I think this might be it."

"Wow," Tony said. He sniffed. "That bad, huh?" Peter closed his eyes. He could still see Harley, dead, splayed out in the middle of the room surrounded by bodies. He could feel the blood on his hands. Worse, he could feel the weight of the machete as he swung it. It hadn't been real.  _ That time _ . But how long until it was? It wasn't a secret that this job would, more likely than not, kill them one day.

"Yeah, well. We got our asses kicked today." 

Tony glanced over at where Harley was curled up on the couch with Morgan. He was reading to her in hushed tones. "He's not going to stop," Tony said.

"I'm not asking him to," Peter assured. He took another sip of his drink. Peter still wasn’t sure how Harley ended up here-- it had never felt right to ask.  _ I saved Tony’s ass  _ is the most information he’d ever offered up willingly. 

He knew that Tony’s involvement had started as more of an abstract fear. How do you just turn the other cheek when you find out that all of your childhood fears are real? So he prepped, and fought, and prepped some more, and he found Harley, then Peter, and taught them how to protect themselves from the horrors they’d been exposed to. 

Tony kept them alive and sane.

Peter watched him. "When you took us in is this how you expected everything to end up?"

Tony shook his head. "This is better than the best case scenario." Peter followed his gaze back to Morgan and Harley. After the day they’d had, the scene was too domestic, too normal. 

It was a hard job to leave at the door. Out of them all, Harley was the best at it. He always had been, even when they were kids. When the hunt was over, it was over. The amount of nights they’d spent with Tony and Peter like zombies and Harley talking their ear off about anything else… 

It was exactly why Harley would never quit. Unlike Tony and Peter, he wasn’t driven by fear or a sense of responsibility-- he hunted because it was what he knew, it was what he was good at. 

\--

Morgan's scream is what woke Peter in the middle of the night. The covers were flung onto the floor before he was even awake. He grabbed his gun on his way out the door.

He met Harley in the hallway. They burst into the room, and turned the light on.

Morgan was sitting upright in bed, her eyes wide and red.

"What's wrong?" Peter demanded. His eyes swept the room.

"I- I had a bad dream," Morgan sniffled. "There was something in the closet."

Peter and Harley exchanged a glance. Harley headed toward the closet. Peter left his gun at the door and perched on the edge of Morgan's bed. "What happened in your dream?" he asked as Harley sifted through the clothes and toys strewn about Morgan's closet. Peter could hear the faint beep of the EMF reader.

"It- it came out." Morgan hiccuped. "And it stared at me, and it reached out and it... it... it pointed at me, and it was walking toward me and I-I woke up." She was trembling. 

"All clear," Harley said from the closet. He looked at Morgan, and most of the panic had drained from his face. "It was just a dream."

Peter let his shoulders relax. He put a hand on the top of Morgan’s head.

“See?” He said, “nothing.” But he wasn’t sure if he was reassuring her or himself. “The monsters are too scared of Harley and I to come bother you.” The grin he was forcing hurt his cheeks. This had been his biggest fear for the past four years. “Let’s get you back to bed, okay?”

He flipped her sheets over her head, and relaxed a little more when her scared hiccups turned into soft giggles.

“Why?” Morgan asked.

“Because it’s four in the morning,” Harley said. “And  _ some  _ of us have jobs to go to in the morning.”

“That some of us isn’t you,” Peter said under his breath. Morgan laughed again.

“No,” she said. “Why are monsters afraid of you?” She wriggled her head free from under the sheet. Her hair was messed up. She was looking at them with curious eyes.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Peter asked. He motioned between him and Harley.

“No,” Morgan said. Harley snorted. Peter’s face fell.

“Well,” Peter said, indignant, “then I don’t think I can tell you.”

“You can!”

“Nope. It’s a really big secret, and I can’t risk you telling anyone.”

“Peter!”

“Morgan!”

She held out a pinky. “I won’t tell anyone,” she said.

“Not even your dolls?” Harley asked.

“Or your friends?” Peter chimed in.

“Or Happy?”

“No one!” She said. Peter and Harley exchanged a glance. Harley nodded, grim. Peter took her pinky in his. He leaned forward and whispered something in her ear. “Really?” She asked, her face was bright with wonder. He nodded.

“But remember,” he said. “You can’t tell  _ anyone _ .”

”I won’t,” She promised.

“Good,” Peter said. “There’s one more thing.”

“What?”

“You need to go to sleep.” Peter turned the bedroom light off, retrieved his gun. “Goodnight.”

“Goodnight. Goodnight, Harley.”

“Night, Morgan.” He backed out the door. “What did you tell her?” Harley asked when the door was shut firmly behind them.

Peter grinned. “Just that you and I hunt monsters,” he said.

Harley slapped him on the back. “See you in the morning, Pete.”

“Yeah, goodnight.” Peter watched him walk back to his own room, his own exhaustion returning.

When he finally slept again, he dreamed about Ben and the demon that killed him. He dreamed about when Tony found him, a scared child, trying to summon Crowley into a Devil's Trap. He was fourteen again, scared and clutching a spray bottle of holy water when a shitty, old car pulled up beside him. The man driving scolded him, used some words that were typically saved for an older audience.

When Peter slid into the backseat for the first time Harley handed him a machete with a wry grin. 

"You ever killed a vampire before?" Harley asked. Peter swallowed and shook his head. "Aim for the head." Peter watched the back of his head as he turned back toward the windshield. He propped his legs up on the dashboard. Tony smacked them down. 

“You’ll break your legs,” he warned him.

“Only if you crash into something.” 

And the love Peter felt between them was something familiar and warm. 

The first time he ever saw Hellhounds in action was the most grateful he had ever felt:

“And that,” Tony had said to them as he pointed at the shredded remains of the victim, “is why you don’t make deals with demons.” 

Peter woke up and thought about the first time he had held Morgan. How no one had ever discussed whether or not they would tell her about hunting, but no one did anyway. She was their second chance. She could be spared of all this. 

\--

"I called MJ,” Peter said to the silence of the breakfast table. It was just him and Tony. Rhodey and Harley were out working a case, Pepper was running errands with Morgan, and Happy was off doing… whatever it was Happy did when no one was around. “I'm meeting her for a case out in Iowa."

Tony raised an eyebrow. "That doesn't sound like being done."

"We're gonna see how it goes." Peter sipped at his orange juice. "We might call it after that. She has a place out there."

Tony nodded. He put a hand on Peter's shoulder. He said, "keep in touch," the same way one might say, "I'll miss you."

**Author's Note:**

> I wasn't sure whether to tag this major character death or not...
> 
> Anyway, this AU was stuck in my head for DAYS so I had to do it. It took the most time of any other fic I've written, I think, and it's definitely my longest one shot. If you liked it, feel free to leave a comment or message me on Tumblr @dredfulhapiness. I love talking about this family, no matter what Sony is too greedy to give us.


End file.
